Hello and a few questions...

[Connie Aniseed]

Hi, I'm completely new to the concept of lucid dreaming - I only stumbled across this site yesterday after having a dream discussion with some friends but am fascinated! I hope you don't mind me asking a few questions. I spent all day yesterday reading about lucid dreaming and have been doing the hourly reality checks which are quite fun! I have very good dream recall and often keep records of my dreams anyway, so I thought I'd try this last night. I had 6 dreams and I think my 3rd one was lucid - I woke up from a dream and was talking to my flatmate, then realised she wasn't in the country so I couldn't be talking to her. I recognised I was dreaming and immediately woke up for real. I have read the tips on here about remaining calm to keep the dream and spinning etc but I didn't even get the chance to get excited or surprised, i woke up so quick! Is that normal/common? How long did it take you to be able to remain in the dream? How often do you do reality checks? And how long did it take for you to carry the habit with you to your dreams? I am a smoker but surprisingly I never smoke in my dreams! So I was wondering if this technique is likely to work for me - I am definitely going to try it anyway. One more question, what is the connection, between astral projection and lucid dreaming? I read about this in another thread but am confused as to weather people view the two as the same thing or not. Sorry for the rather long post just a little over excited!!

[NeAvO]

Hello Connie and welcome to DV! Well you seem to be off to a flying start, you already have a dream journal and good recall plus already had a few lucids! You might want to give it time before you can have a long lucid, some times the first are usually very short but they get better, besides you crossed the milestone any where and have had one. It's recommended you do like 20 reality checks a day or so, but you should be fine if you do one an hour, easy tip: Set your watch to bleep each hour, when it does perform a rc. Smoking shouldn't affect lucid dreaming so you're fine there. Now the thing with astral projecting is that it could be a WILD. Both of them have common occurences, both involve sleep paralysis, audio sounds, vibrations and other sensations. It's so similar that astral projection may just be a dream where you think you are out of your body, still fully conscious, but don't realise that you are dreaming. Hope this helps!

[valis]

ive read from billybobs tutorial it says you should only do rc's when you see something out of place... i dont know if it works any better or worse than doing them every hour or so... maybe some people with more experience with this could give their thoughts....

[NeAvO]

ive read from billybobs tutorial it says you should only do rc's when you see something out of place... i dont know if it works any better or worse than doing them every hour or so... maybe some people with more experience with this could give their thoughts.... That's usually when you see dream signs or so. When you have a dream sign, say your school, you do a reality when you see/think/go to school. So that when it appears in your dream you should do a reality check for it Apart from that you just do reality checks every hour or so, so that it makes it's way into your dreams.

[DreamingGod]

I do Reality checks often (Maybe too often ) Oh yea and Connie Aniseed

[Connie Aniseed]

Thanks, that's interesting - I'd better start doing reality checks half hourly then because I'm only able to do them for about 10 of my waking hours! I really like the idea of doing checks when you see a dream sign, that makes perfect sense but I don't think any of my dream signs would present themselves in reality as they tend to be talking animals, walking trees, people from my past or that have passed, houses i used to live in etc. I'll have to look through my dream diaries and see if there are any situations occurring regularly that are more normal! What worried me about smoking was the fact that this is a habit I have in reality that I don't seem to have in my dreams. I was thinking that if that habit doesn't follow into the dream world then will the habit of performing reality checks? I guess the only way I'll find out is to try it and see but I'd be interested to know if anyone else has any habits in reality that they do or don't have in their dreams. Thank you for the welcome

[DreamQueen]

Hi Connie, this is my first post ever! From what I've read and from my own experience the first time I had a LD it's pretty normal to be so amazed that you wake up. A good trick next time you realise you're dreaming is to immediately focus on your environment rather than your "awareness". Look around you while quietly repeating to yourself "I'm dreaming" so that you don't lose the lucidity then try to fly or do something else exciting. Performing an activity seems to 'hold' you in the dream better than standing around thinking as it seems to prevent your conscious awareness from getting too introspective which puts you at risk of waking up. Works for me! You will get better at staying in the dream over time. It shouldn't take too long

[Connie Aniseed]

Dream Queen - Thanks for the advice and encouragement, I realise I'm lucky to have had an experience at all but I can't wait to have a longer one! I'm going to have a go tonight and if anything happens will try and focus on your tip. How long have you been able to LD? Is it something that occurs naturally for you or did you have to 'train' yourself to be able to do it?

[DreamQueen]

It first occurred naturally a few years ago and I've had a few since then without really trying. Just a few nights ago I had an incredible one and I found myself wishing I could have them every night so that inspired me to google it and I found this website/forum! I'm definitely going to try and improve my ability and frequency of LDs. The dream last night was so cool. I walked through a solid door! I then went into my bedroom to see if I could see myself in my bed but sadly my bed was empty. I had been planning to go over and shake the "me" that was in the bed to see if I could wake myself up and have a conversation with myself! I wonder if anyone has ever done this!

[DreamQueen]

I think the fact that you obtained awareness once shows that you are capable of it. It will just take practice. You can't expect to have an LD every night at this stage. But who knows? You might be lucky!